There has never been a new thing that can change China's catering industry so drastically and quickly like "takeaway". At present, the scale of China's food delivery market has exceeded 240 billion, with 358 million users.
For catering owners, the situation is becoming less optimistic-the take-out subsidy bonus period has passed, and the sampling point has risen to about 20%. The once optimistic "takeaway brands" will either transform or fall.
In this context, we found Mi for a reason. Founded in 2015, this brand that focuses on food delivery has 6 directly-operated stores in Beijing, with daily orders ranging from 500 to 700, and it is home to top1 and top2 rice bowls in Haidian District and Chaoyang District. It is known as the "Wudaokou God Store". How does
come to today step by step? The founder of Mi has reason, Shang Yang, shared his experience and methods with us.
Restaurant owner's internal reference / article
01 What is special about "Wudaokou God Store"? Understanding young people and being a "new product manager"
m has a reason to enter the Wudaokou business district. It was in 2016~2017.
In Beijing, Wudaokou is jokingly called "the center of the world". This is a comprehensive business district that includes colleges, startups, and communities, with a dense flow of people and mainly young people.
m has reason to treat Wudaokou as a strategic commanding height. "If you can win the young consumer group here, then I think young people in other districts will also think we are OK."
There is a reason to contact Mi for the first time. You will find that they have two major "weird" .
First of all, their products are not focused, focusing on "broad spectrum." In addition to the two main products of , Beef Beef Cooking Rice and Avocado Bibimbap, other products are iterating very quickly. It wasn't until this year that they locked the category on "beef"; secondly, they used "hand-painted style". The no-dining take-out store did not actually use real dishes, and all products were drawn by hand.
consumers’ trust in take-out brands is inherently low. Isn’t that afraid of reducing conversion?
is not afraid. Shang Yang believes that these "weirds" are based on their observations and research on young consumer groups, which is why Mi has a reason to distinguish it from other traditional catering brands. "Master Diao said that in the new consumer era, a'new product manager' was born, which I agree with."
specifically to explain the two reasons for rice.
First of all, "broad spectrum" is based on fast food and takeaway business. The product line is broad enough to ensure that the consumer group is large enough and the future reproducibility is strong enough. The
hand-painted style is better explained: real shooting increases the conversion rate, and hand-painted increases the collection volume, each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Mi has reason to hope that it is not how good the product is, but to show the brand's aesthetics through hand-painting, and to reduce consumer expectations. After all, real shot products are like beauty net celebrities, which are easy to see.
Judging from the results, "weird" is good, and the acceptance of young consumer groups is not a problem-Mi has reason for the large number of large orders and group orders in the store, especially for delivery to universities and technology companies.
02 How do fast food brands? Consider three questions first:
From the perspective of scale, Mi is not a big brand, but it can become the top takeaway business in the Wudaokou business district where the big names gather. How to do it? The founder Shang Yang also shared his methodology with us.
First of all, what needs to be emphasized ten thousand times is that opening a restaurant at is not an investment activity, but an entrepreneurial activity.
Many catering managers are unwilling and impatient to do trivial operations with store personnel, hoping to issue orders remotely. Under such a value system, it is impossible to create a brand that can stand the test of the market and survive the market cycle.
Secondly, for the fast food field, Shang Yang believes that three questions need to be considered first, especially for newcomers, who must first learn to think before making choices:
1. Do you want to have a high customer order or a low customer order?
2, do you want a simple product or a complex product?
3, do you want small and beautiful, or large-scale?
Combining Mi’s reasonable experience, Shang Yang views the above three questions in this way:
01 high customer orders or low customer orders?
usually believes that low customer orders are easy to sell and easy to start. Think about it in depth. Although low customer orders are easy to get, but the competition in the price range is fierce and the audience is price sensitive. With the irreversible increase of various costs in the catering industry, it is very easy to form a dilemma of "internal and external troubles". How does
break through? Either the operator has a certain cost advantage, or has the ability to systematically reduce costs. For novices, both are difficult.
mi has reason to believe that low customer orders are not the future, because in this price range, the factors that affect rigid costs are not in the hands of the operators, or even in the supply chain, but in the more ambitious policies and markets that are difficult to grasp. Therefore, in the past few years since its founding, the unit price of rice has been slowly increasing and has reached around 30.
To make a high customer order is not a simple action. A common misunderstanding is that high customer orders = high gross profit, which is not necessarily true.
First of all, high customer orders need to cover more costs. In addition to conventional costs, there are additional costs such as food material upgrades, brand building, visual communication, and customer experience refinement. Secondly, once the market is opened up, a large number of follow-ups will be poured into the market to start a price war and reduce the room for category profits. Operators of
need to think about whether "gross profit" is important or "single order contribution to profit" is important? Experts value the latter, because only in this way can they master the initiative and make reasonable decisions.
02 Simple product or complex product?
is simple, which means easy to learn, easy to copy, easy to scale up, and operators can enjoy the dividends brought by regional brand density. However, simplicity also means that the factor that determines business success is often not the product, but the development dividend of the category.
is a simple and easy-to-copy category, essentially a capital game. If you want to choose this category, try to ask yourself, where is its malleability? How do I build my own moat?
meters have a reasoned experience: is not simple if you want to cultivate deeply; if you want to last, chase less hot spots. Since the opening of
, Mi has no reason to make hot products such as crayfish, pickled fish, spicy and so on. It is not a technical factor, but it is difficult to occupy a position in these tracks. At the same time, it is easy to shake Mi. "Cooking" in the minds of customers. The complexity of
will allow catering entrepreneurs with certain operational capabilities to stand out. Complex selection means choosing products with better quality. If a 45-year-old sister with a primary school diploma can also master it in 3 hours, then this complexity is acceptable and replicable.
takes advantage of the malleability of categories, simple and complex can be organically combined. In terms of turnover rate, customer unit price, gross profit margin, consumer cognition and other multiple points, multiple dimensions, connected into a line, and finally formed the unique advantages of the brand. The product power built with this logic is something that Mi has reason to respect.
03 Small but beautiful, or large-scale? There is no right or wrong for
, but making a good choice at the beginning can save a lot of energy.
In the beginning, Mi had reason to want to learn Haidilao, even set up an employee points assessment system, designed a master-apprentice system, etc. The actual operation was very lossy. This is the choice of the wrong frame of reference.
Why is a 5-person supermarket easy to manage, but a 5-person small restaurant is not easy to manage? The reason is that the internal stability is different.
fast food, due to high intensity, poor working environment, and lack of identity, naturally has genes for fragile personnel structure. And for a small organization of five people that lacks discipline and lack of backup personnel, the departure of any one person will cause the instability of the remaining personnel and thus the instability of the product.
Therefore, the pressure of fast food direct operation is huge, and the establishment of a management framework in a series chain network is a necessary condition for direct operation. If
wants to be small and beautiful, then the object of study should not be a first-line, national brand, but should choose a regional, corresponding-scale restaurant company. For most entrepreneurs, rather than studying celebrity cases, it is better to build a stable store and create a single store model-once it runs through, the operator can enter the initiative and choose whether it is small but beautiful or large-scale.
03 Focus on beef, open to join, Mi has reason to decide to go out of Wudaokou
This year, Mi has reason to make two big moves.
First of all, focus on beef category. This food material supply chain is stable, and there is a lot of room for consumption to rise. Both cooking methods and taste have greater scalability. The manufactured products have good stability, slow decay, and are suitable for the take-out format. At present, Mi has reason to start a comprehensive adjustment of its product line, and consumer feedback is good.
Next, it is open to join. After becoming the "Wudaokou God Store", Mi's next logical step is to step out of the regional business circle, export products and operating systems, and use the power of franchisees to reach young people in a wider area with the business structure of "takeaway + dine-in" Groups of people.
Can they become the "God Shop" in more regions? We need to wait for time and the market to give answers.
